"Look out honey cause their using technology -- Don't got time to make no apologies"
Iggy Pop, "Search And Destroy"
In the folds of everyday life, there play sets of conventional rules. The corresponding relations have a sense to them, one that people negotiate and contend with. Often these conventions are an indulgence of false appearances, with symbolic oppositions and noneffecting controversies. Regrettably though, these postures of society often affect or ignore real existences - lives that matter, lives that have an original possibility. What these lives are is vastly unspoken of, mostly unrecognized except by the repressive institutions that they would subvert or transcend. The ensuing actions of these secret opponents pervade a landscape of silent strife and tragic loss, and too often, a world of unbelievably horrible consequences. Lost amongst the falseness, amongst society's "lack" of interest, lives and minds of intrinsic aesthetic value suffer catastrophic damage, imprisonment, and danger.
One of these seemingly inconsequential social scenarios, is the forced psychiatric treatment of exceptional minds by the professional community. Forced treatment, drugging with debilitating toxic chemicals, and even electroshock are administered to those who experience the world in a way that questions its dimensional terms. This enforced reality is one maintained and policed by [an x-ray strength] professional standard of "acceptable" thought, knowledge, and behavior.
While forced commitment [without due process], electroshock, and drugging are often, except for the people these devastate, symbolic issues, the real story is that the situation for mental health patients is really bad. Needless to say, in terms of the aesthetic environment, mental health treatment is a disaster. It also seems that these concerns are never adequately dealt with, nor do the constituent patients ever become freed.
As with attempts at intelligent governmental health care reform, the context of reality, thought, and social control is a subject that is never articulated or exposed in a way that allows for real public action or understanding. The real issues are diverted to avoid the possibility of real change. Because of this, instead of the world realizing truth and freedom, the world suffers through coercion and deception. Existence is cheated of its beneficent expression by an apologetic [albeit requisite] manipulation. In microcosm and at crises base, these issues are also found in mental health treatments.
The exposition is one that this writer regrets wasting on psychiatric terms. The terms and the polemic are drearily sad, though the desperation and defeat that is "at work" cries out in an agony that seems centuries old. Patterns woven of art and ecstasy, lost to the daily effort required to fend off a constant metaphysical mugging - this mired in a collection area of the society's most grossly enforced generalities, a brutish ideological muscle relentlessly boiled down to a self fulfilling scum. Sparks of ideas, like nothing else of this world, are obscured and devalued by the humiliation of responding to sickening and assaultive notions of institutional "sanity." The invective issues forth from it like an open bleeding wound. Even this, though, is useful in tracing back the stains of its rancor, forced panic, and destroyed lives. You eventually find that which grotesquely and cerebrally dominates to maintain power. Would that it could be removed from our environment.
People drawn into, or unfortunate enough to attract the attention of the authoritarian parts of the mental health system are seriously and adversely affected by a manipulation of survival, health, and crisis. This includes an accompanying possibility of horrible and desperate situations. It is almost impossible, though, to scientifically demonstrate that dissenting minds suffer unexplained harm, mental stress, incarcerative effects, and sleep problems that are caused by hostile third causes. There is no "evidence" of this, just many who suffer, fail, and fear... or worse. Physical and chemical detainment in a psychiatric institution is only a mere hint. Ironically, trying to speak, reason, or articulate events this way is what a psychiatrist would refer to as "losing contact with reality" or "delusional or paranoid thinking." It seems there would be a better explanation than the clinical analysis. Consider that another explanation may actually remove the harm. Consider that an effective action may include items that scientific argument would not admit. Consider that an effective expose of the power of the professional community would attend to these items instead of challenging them on their own well policed public justifications.
Whether a person has the ability to challenge the "therapeutic state" is probably an invitation to an undue scrutiny and other social problems. To interfere with psychiatry's deterministic function is a very serious risk. For reasons like this, there is presently no credible public examination of psychiatry's methods and goals. Seemingly no one can adequately demonstrate the tragic personal experience of mental incarceration or the disabling effects of powerful psychiatric drugs or shock. Contrary to popular opinion, the effects of the drugs are not tranquilizing, they are ones of extreme emotional and physical discomfort, restlessness, and a bleakness that is indescribable. This is combined with a psycho-physical regimen implemented by the professional community - one that demands a knowledgeable conformity that is quite personal and is thoughtfully monitored against any signs of dissension. No one who loves freedom would agree with the inhumanity of these practices, and few even think this kind of manipulation even possible. Alas though, due to the enormous power of manipulative professionals, an overly simplistic and diverting scientific rhetoric, and also due to an often misrepresented ["therapeutic"] public image and cultivated public trust, the people who do this are allowed to make most important political and cultural decisions.
The courts have refused to protect patient's civil liberties, instead they label those treated or committed as "incompetent" when acting in a way that professionals cannot control or categorize. Seen in the extreme by those affected, it seems like a system of uninformed violation and slavery. Seen in terms of mental health's popular image, what happens to patients is justified and even desirable. Even with the system's intentional obscuration of the rights issues, forced electroshock is an extreme measure. It exposes the real inhumanity of forced psychiatry. In this issue, for once, the repressive parts of the psychiatric community have actually been caught [provably, scientifically, and demonstrably] harming people. Forced psychiatric drugging, because of its extensive biophysical chemical intrusion, is also important. These effects are what authoritarian psychiatric practitioners depend on to make difficult and rebellious patients docile. Many never again become independent. Though done to seemingly few people, even a symbolic opposition to these excesses creates an awareness of real freedom from other, less obvious, though ultimately more formidable repressions. This shows the way to the removal of the odd manifestations and distortions of professionals ungainly adoption of an unreal, intolerant, and crisis-generating system.
Most of the public, seeing physicians as sympathetic figures, would say that most are not authoritarian, not likely to misprescribe. Doctors' own well-meaning ethical standards actually expose the fundamental problem with the mental health "system" and the issues that are never discussed. It exposes an oddly unnatural and eccentric application of force. The professional community, as an institution, is not as interested in the individual's happiness and cure as they are in trying to control and eliminate a sort of activity and thought they call "psychosis." "Psychosis," to psychiatric enforcement, is what should not be acted out, known, or even thought. Quite an astonishing contention to present to an intelligent human being in a supposedly free western society. It sounds so incredibly thuglike that one can hardly believe it should be taken seriously. The ancient Greeks believed that the conduct of mind was instrumental in reality's creation. In contrast to this, the professional community maintains that the terror of the unpredictable and unknown should rule the world of events. Momentous philosophic accomplishments are contemptuously laughed at in their inability to effect anything about the society - fineries of mind grossly rendered into a system of "allowable" tracks. This outrageous control, in the interjections of professional abilities and determinations, serves a goal that staggers the sensibilities - the strategic regulation of the very possibilities of thought as its practice effects the context of events. Freedom cannot even obtain the means of it own thoughtful creation. Part of the success of this controlling activity is predicated on most people assuming that it is impossible, on people not recognizing what is being done and the means by which it is done. To see real results though, one just needs to watch the misfortunes of people who raise a serious dissent - and find the impetus of the toxic consequences they suffer from.
In their manipulations, the professional community, of course, allows themselves a much greater information than those they limit. They attempt, in closely and fearfully maintained privation, to become the ultimate judges of what is thought, realized, and lived. [Not an exaggeration.] This writer would like to except himself from this. To be certain that there are no real challenges or exceptions, the professional community has developed many very efficient means of controlling and maintaining "catchment areas," as well as the ability to apply social and economic pressure, punish, divert attention, and maintain a secrecy. This enforcement can get pretty frightening and often be quite "unwitnessable." The patients feel the anguish, the damage, the directive, with the source always beyond their means to affect it. It is doubtful the rest of the medical community can actually afford to care what is done. Even if they do care, there is a very real possibility that they can no longer legislate control of these powerful institutions and people. The result would be too much chaos, too much loss of advantage and control.
Many people maltreated by the system have protested. After so many protests, though, why has popular psychiatry consistently resisted humanizing its practices? What could possibly be worth betraying the trust and freedom of so many people and risking discord and suspicion? Many fairly uninvolved psychiatrists really believe they are [inarguably] right to suppress all "psychotic" thoughts and actions - and - will tolerate any means to accomplish this "greater goal." Many psychiatrists are convinced, without realizing the greater domination they participate in, that "uncontrolled" events are a threat to everyone's security. Because of the dramatic importance of these "survivability" issues [in almost monolithic proportions], psychiatrists see no one as qualified to criticize their actions. Interestingly, human memory seems just another "part" of their scenario's coercion, and any "approved" medical chemistry that avoids the pain of it is supposedly "their" cure, as is the art and lives of those they detain. The pressure is to make an example of those who will not admit this. Personally destructive labels and interpretations to commit the otherwise harmless are common in this way. Even at their worst, most of these people are not dangerous, and are far less dangerous than the mental health system's notions of "enforcement."
It is starkly evident that the hierarchy of involuntary authority, the enforcement and policing of human consciousness, is permeated with betrayal. It is permeated with the urge to consume an innocence and art that it could never create. Talking, especially talking to professionals, becomes an act of forced degradation. It becomes the ratting out of those who share exceptional existences, a betrayal of honesty and goodness. While "paranoia" is the clinical word used to describe these sorts of ideations, professionals nevertheless find an informative use for their admissions. The powerful and systematic efficiency with which this and other incarcerative, disruptive, and consumptive effects are accomplished is astonishing, with mental abilities, means, and scenarios that are completely beyond any "normal" explanatory discussion.
Unaware people should know that the lengths that the professional community has gone to are quite beyond belief. They are not giving anyone the whole story. It is a more sophisticated, diverse, and advanced world than others are allowed to realize. The professional community's real methods are almost never discussed in the terms that they occur. Thus, effective acts of opposition are relegated to irrational portrayals. All that any concerned person is left with is symbols, vestiges of science that could hopefully coincide with an action that has a "different" [and real] effect for freedom.
This is an issue of helpless people against overwhelming odds. Professional domination is a grotesque degradation. In a world of aesthetically clear sensibilities, the anathema is badly exposed, the degradation of civilization, thought, and the aesthetic of existence is horrific. People should instead help protect the weak and set their minds free. Please consider the humanist intervention in the way professionals are trained and established. Please consider a symbolic act to remove the injustice.
Gervais Khinespre, 1997
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